Fire Along the Sky
Page 36

He put back his head and groaned. “I won't marry and go to war.”
“Because you might die.”
He nodded. “Among other things.”
“But tomorrow a tree might fall on your hard head, Luke Bonner, and kill you just as dead as a hangman's noose. I'll admit it would have to be a bloody great tree to do the job, but in theory at least it is possible.” She wound a hand in his hair and tugged until he brought his face to hers, and then she nipped his lower lip. “And still you won't marry and go to war.”
“Jennet.” His breath on her skin, and suddenly all of him cradled between her legs, but he was talking and she must listen.
“Think for a minute. Remember that I live in Canada. If a common soldier falls in battle his widow and family get a pension from the king, or they should. If things go badly for me—” He paused, moved his hips experimentally and grinned when she could not hold back a gasp.
“They'd hang you for a spy and traitor.” She tried to close her knees and he turned expertly to stop her, raised his own knee and lodged it against the heat of her.
With his mouth touching hers he said, “And all my holdings would be forfeit to the king, and should I have a wife she'd be penniless and—people would not be kind. Now can we finish what we've started, girl?”
He gave her a hard look and for a moment she was reminded, uncomfortably, of the days long ago when he had tutored her in Latin and French and philosophy. He had been a demanding teacher, uncompromising and infuriating. How often had she wished him and his mulish ways to the devil.
“But,” Jennet said.
His knee nudged more insistently; his belly touched hers and she felt herself start to melt away.
“But what?”
She forced herself to say it. “I don't understand why you've got to run off and spy, like a boy who can't stand to be left out of a game.”
At that his face tightened just enough to let her know that she had gone too far.
“You wouldn't understand.”
“Of course I wouldna,” she said, twisting away from him suddenly. She pulled the blanket up to cover herself. “I'm naucht but daftie, a jaud, a wee lass wha doesna ken her place.”
“You wouldn't understand,” he said very deliberately, but he didn't put his hands on her again.
“Och, I see,” Jennet said bitterly. “Politics. What wad I ken o sic things, coming up as I did a papist in Protestant Scotland.”
“You're being dense,” he said in his severest schoolmaster voice. “It doesn't suit you.”
Her temper flared so quickly that she could not stop herself from raising a hand, which he caught neatly.
He said, “You can slap me a thousand times, Jennet Scott, you can wish me to the devil in a hundred languages. But I will not marry you until this war is over.”
She forced her breathing to a calmer place, uncomfortably aware of his arousal and her own. “And if I will not lay with you until you do?”
“Then we'll both suffer for it,” he said with a flash of anger as bright as her own. “For you want me as much as I want you. Or will you deny it?”
He pulled the blanket down and pressed her against him, his hand spanning the small of her back. And he wanted her, oh yes, and she wanted him so fiercely that for a moment she simply forgot how to draw breath. Then he pulled her beneath him and pinned her hands with his own and kissed her so thoroughly that everything else was driven from her mind but the taste and feel of him.
“Deny it,” he demanded, and kissed her again before she could say even a single word.
“Deny it,” he said again, more fiercely. Luke in a temper, and because he wanted her; it was more than she had let herself hope for, so soon.
“I canna.” She shook her head feebly from side to side. “I cannot deny that I want you, Luke Bonner. Can you deny that you love me?”
He smiled against her mouth, turned his hip with the grace of a dancing master and then in one strong thrust he locked himself inside her.
“Finally,” he said hoarsely, spreading one hand beneath her to lift her hips. She opened her mouth to welcome him but he kissed her and closed the circle, belly to belly and mouth to mouth.
Later, when the fury had passed, Luke picked her up. They were both naked and slick with sweat, speckled with straw.
“Take the lantern,” he said, crouching down so she could snatch it by the handle, and then he carried her out of the barn toward the rushing of the waterfall.
“Somebody will see,” she said against his neck. She knew she should be concerned but could not find it in herself. Everything in her throbbed, every nerve, and what else was there to know?
“We're just soaking your bumps.” He was grinning in the way of a man who has got what he wanted, which both infuriated her and made her want to give him more.
With the lantern set on a plane of stone they slid into water so blessedly cool in the slick heat of the night air that anything she might have wanted to say was lost in a sigh of contentment.
For a long while they did nothing but float together in the water, paddling quietly or clinging to the mossy rocks to exchange kisses. Then Jennet remembered the question she had asked, but that he had not bothered to answer.
“You never did say,” she scolded him. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the waterfall, and he was ever a man to take advantage of such things.
“What?” He put his head back to wet his hair again and then shook himself like a dog. “What did you want me to say?”